Feels Like Home

Michelle "Mickey" Owens, a girl from Three Rivers, Texas, has just lost her father. She is all alone, with the exception of her dad's best friend, Uncle Jack. He isn't really related to her, but she has called him "uncle" for as long as she can remember. Michelle is shocked when her brother she had been trying to forget for years shows up. Danny Owens, the guy who disappeared six years ago after killing his best friend by mistake, has returned for his father's funeral. Anyone might think that wasn't that strange, because it is his dad. But in this case, it is very unusual, seeing as to how he hated his father. Michelle hasn't seen or heard from him in those six years. He isn't the same person as he used to be- the perfect brother and golden boy with a football scholarship. No, Danny's eyes give him away. He doesn't have that same life in it that they did when he read with his sister from The Outsiders, his eyes look dead. And now he has come back to take care of his orphaned sister, no longer the seventh grader that she was when he left. She is going to graduate soon, and with all of these new emotions- grief, anger, and hatred- her life is more stressful than ever. She has to face her brother and the book that never again will feel like home to her.

True, this is a story of deep loss, but mostly it is a story of hope -- not the sappy everything-works-out-in-the-end kind of hope, but a believable real-life strand of hope runs throughout the main character Mickey's life. And it's not because good things happen to her, it's because of the undying goodness within her and her ability to see the good in others. Just the kind of thing I want my 13-year-old to read. It's moving, it's artful, it's easy to enter and hard to leave. The story and characters come alive and were more than enough of a "hook" to keep me reading; but even if it that weren't the case, I would have kept reading for the artful and powerful prose alone. Charlton-Trujillo has a gift and I'm sure glad she's sharing it with the Young Adult (and not-so-young adult) world.

E.E. Charlton-Trujillo's FEELS LIKE HOME tells of a girl who grows up in a dead-end Texas town whose life falls apart when her brother abandons her to her drunken father. Now Danny is back - a different person - and Mickey's newly-rebuilt life is threatened. The past haunts her in this moving story of family relationships and renewal.

I've been taken back in time and relived moments of my teenage years. Memories have come flooding back in the characters of this story of facing the past. I see my own hometown in this story set in a small town in South Texas. I see it's streets, places, and people. I remember wishing at times that nobody in town or at school knew me or my family secrets and problems. By the end of this book I wanted to know what Mickey will do after high school, has a relationship grown with the high school football hero, will she ever forgive her brother? My eyes are welled up!

In the interests of fair disclosure, let me say I know (and like) e.E.Charlton-Trujillo. I know and like a lot of authors, but I seldom want to review one of their books. This time I do. I defy you to read the stunning first chapter of "Feels Like Home" and then be able to put the book down. What an inspired opening for a novel! 17 or 18 year old Micky is at her father's funeral, along with almost (but not quite) everyone important to her story. Practically the whole town of Three Rivers, Texas, population 4,043, has turned out - gringos and Mexicans alike. Gestures, snippets of conversation, Micky's private observations, all these quickly and indelibly delineate the characters. There's Christina, Micky's best friend, "wiping her streaking mascara"; Uncle Jack, giving Micky "this look he was so good at, the one that asked, 'You okay?'"; Albert Trevinoon, still carrying the smell of the garage on him, "a good smell. Like Dad." And finally, the last person Micky expects to see there, her brother Danny with his "unwrangled hair," Danny who used to be "gold," Danny, who left Three Rivers and Micky years ago. Micky's voice is presented so flawlessly the reader almost slips into her skin as the story progresses. Scenes unfold like scenes in a movie. Charllton-Trujillo has a director's eye for detail and a director's sense of pacing. And over and above these, she writes with a wry and loving sensibility that makes us care deeply for her characters -- for Micky and Danny, of course, but also for the rest of the population of Three Rivers, Texas. There are no unloved characters in this story, not even Mrs. Alvarado, the school counselor, whose "door is always open," except that it never is. By the time you come to the end, the town of Three Rivers will feel like home to you too. A word of warning: If you haven't read S.E. Hiton's "The Outsiders," you'll find yourself running out to get a copy. That book plays such an important role in Micky and Danny's relationship it almost becomes a character itself.